Six decades in the outdoors, told through the stories of four special blades
J. ALFRED PRUFROCK, the protagonist of a famous poem, measured out his life with coffee spoons. I’ve measured out mine with knives. In the 60-plus years I’ve been mucking about in the outdoors, and in the nearly 60 years I’ve been collecting knives, I’ve had hundreds pass through my hands, and they’ve served as a kind of calendar. Here are a few of them.
APRIL 1952
THE KIDDIE KA-BAR
When I was 10, I was sent off to summer camp in the wilds of Maine. Part of the camp’s program was to get us out in the wilderness with inadequate equipment and have us travel by canoe and by foot. We slept in the rain without tents. We cooked over wood fires, and I found that no matter where I parked myself, that was where the smoke would blow.
Loons bellowed at us in the night. Mosquitoes ate us in the evenings. We saw a moose drinking in the shallows. We saw a canoe that had hit a rock sideways in the rapids and split in two. Our head counselor was a flyfisherman. He’d cast with his bamboo rod in the mornings and catch trout for breakfast. We’d knock out the guts, put bacon in the body cavities, wrap them in tinfoil, and lay them on coals. I thought it was all terrific. I still do. A few months before I headed for the Great North Woods, my parents bought me a Ka-Bar sheath knife. I already owned a Boy Scout folding knife, but I pointed out noisily that it was unequal to the wilderness, and did they want their kid to die for lack of blade length?
So they caved and bought me the Ka- Bar. It has a trailing point blade of just under 4 inches and a leather-washer handle that is so small I can only get three fingers on it today. It looks like it was owned by a 10-year-old.
I can’t remember cutting anything with it, including myself, but I must have used it a lot.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April - May 2018 من Field & Stream.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April - May 2018 من Field & Stream.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
LIVING THE DREAM
After the author arrives in Maine’s fabled North Woods with a moose tag in his pocket, an adventure he’s been wanting to take his entire hunting life, reality sets in, and he learns a valuable lesson: Be careful what you wish for
Get the Drift
How to make an accurate windage call under pressure
First Sit
An icebreaker outing in a pristine spot produces the rut hunt of a lifetime
A Local Haunt
The author finds a sense of place in an overlooked creek, close to home
A Hop and a Pump
Jump-shooting rabbits with classic upland guns is about as good a time as you can have in the outdoors
Welcome TO camp
Is there any place better than a good hunting camp? It has everything: great food, games and pranks, and of course, hunting. Shoot, we don’t even mind going to camp for grueling work days in the summer. Here, our contributors share their favorite stories, traditions, and lessons learned from camps they’ve shared. So come on in and join us. The door’s open.
THE DEERSLAYERS
Before you even claim a bunk, you need to eyeball the hardware your buddies have brought. In the process, you’ll see that the guns at deer camp are changing. What was walnut and blued steel may now be Kevlar and carbon fiber. The 10 rifles featured here aren’t your father’s deer guns. They’re today’s new camp classics
THE JOURNEY TO PIKE'S PEAK
Last summer, the author and three friends ventured off the grid to a remote fish camp in Canada. They hoped for great fishing, but what they experienced was truly something else
Stage Directions
When early-season whitetails vanish from open feeding areas, follow this woods-edge ambush plan
Rookie Season
A pup’s first year, from preseason training to fall’s big show